A spanning tree is a minimum cost subnetwork connecting all nodes in an undirected network (same forward and backward costs). If a network is disconnected then the module computes the minimum spanning tree for each (weakly) connected component. So, strictly speaking, v.net.spanningtree does not compute spanning tree but a spanning forest. As the name suggests, a spanning tree is a tree. That is, it contains no cycles and if a component has N nodes then the tree has N-1 edges connecting all nodes. Accol is used to specify the costs of the edges. The output consists of the edges in the spanning tree.